While helping my mother troubleshoot her phone:
I can’t do anything because the keyboard keeps going away
Everything I click on tries to take me to WalMart
It keeps saying the phone is overheating but it’s not overheating, should I download this program it’s recommending?
No! I didn’t download anything! I don’t download things! Wait… Is the app store considered “downloading”?
I can keep going lol
Fortunately my dad is a retired cybersecurity architect so they live as modern-day Luddites.
I wish.
My father currently works in IT and has “smart” everything (except locks, thankfully)
He has multiple Alexa thingies (used to be Google homes), Internet thermostat, smart light switches, smart cameras/doorbells, smart plugs
Idk why he does. The only thing that really provide any value are the light switches and plugs (scheduled lighting) and maybe the doorbell thingies
JFC, that white text is me to a T.
And my printer is a 1998 HP 4050DTN that could probably survive the apocalypse in fair shape.
Even my planned CCTV system will be completely hardlined with shielded cables, technically airgapped, E2E encrypted between the cameras and the server, and with a mechanically-driven RJ45 connector that will allow one-way backups to BackBlaze once a week through a specially configured Bastille server.
Same here. The only part that doesn’t fit me is the Bluetooth - there are much better protocols for that.
I love how it’s the people who know the most about how modern tech works that want nothing to do with 90% of it.
Don’t know about most painful, but it definitely sticks out.
My mother screamed for me at the top of her lungs on the other side of the apartment. I hurried into her office, where I see her pointing at the screen saying “FIX IT!” So I look at the screen and… it’s a save dialogue in Word, asking her if she wants to save her document.
Me: It’s asking you if you want to save the document.
Mother: Well how am I supposed to know that?
Me: Do you want to save the document?
M: I DON’T KNOW!!It’s like she saw the dialogue and her brain crashed. She definitely could’ve read and understood it, but just chose not to. That sort of thing was a frequent occurrence sadly.
deleted by creator
Thanks. Yeah, she’s a horrible and abusive person, and I’ve had zero contact with her for a year and a half now.
Helping my octogenarian mom with her iPhone is the most painful experience. She often calls me about something that has “popped up” in some app that she’s using. I tell her to just close it and she says “how?” I then say something like “just click the OK button … or the Done or Close buttons, that will be some unknown color … or click the X in the upper right or maybe the upper left corner … or click “Done” or “Close” in the toolbar, on the left or right sides … or maybe the thing has slid up from the bottom and you need to swipe down to get rid of it … or maybe you need to click the Home tab on the app’s bottom bar.”
I’ve actually been an iOS mobile developer for 15 years now. Anybody who thinks there’s any sort of consistent, intuitive design principles behind Apple products is insane.
At least it’s the same type of phone you use. My mom has a cheap android phone, with all sorts of crap and limitations from the provider. I guess it’s cheap, but sometimes it’s just not worth it. Anyhow, I haven’t used an Android phone in at least ten years, have no idea about all the crap on hers, and she doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe what she sees or does, but I’m supposed to help over the phone?
It’s much easier if she has an Android phone, you can just use TeamViewer to see and control her phone remotely https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teamviewer.host.market
the fact that my grandmother absolutely, hard ass refuses to do anything that would improve her situation. Just bitches and moans and has great big narcissistic pity parties until someone forces it down her fucking throat.
For example, her vision isnt great, she complaints its hard to use the computer cause she cant see to type (Shes one of those chicken peck typers). I tell her to get a large print keyboard with a backlight, it’d be easier for her to see and use.
She says no, it wont help. nothing will help. boo hoo pity me blah blah bullshit.
Long story short, it goes back and forth for a month, with her refusing the idea, refusing when I directly link her to a keyboard to buy (it was cheap, too), etc etc. Just making a big fucking woe is me pity party out of it.
I finally say fuck it, buy the goddamn keyboard myself, take it over to her house, put it on her computer.
within 5 minutes “Why didnt you tell me about this before? Its amazing! I can see it and use the computer again!”
Shes the reason i’ve been balding for 20 years.
I set up my mom on Microsoft Outlook many years ago, back when you had to set the server and so on.
She called me a few days later and said her email wasn’t working, so I walked her through looking at the options, making sure the right addresses and preferences were checked, etc.
After about 45 minutes, I remembered that I already set everything up correctly and it was working. Then I decided to ask, “are you typing the @ symbol, or are you typing the word at in the email address?”
Yep.
“are you typing the @ symbol, or are you typing the word at in the email address?”
…wut??
My father is 86, is fairly far down the slope of dementia, has a 5th grade education, has a hard time typing because he can’t really see the keys on the keyboard anymore, and still doesn’t do things like this.
…maybe I got lucky?
This occurred about 20ish years ago. Mom had never touched a computer in her life before getting the laptop.
And, this is the same woman who got a new phone and sent me a text that said ‘do you like my new phone?’
This occurred about 20ish years ago.
Oooohhhhh…
Now that makes a lot more sense.
My own father has been using a computer since the 90s, initially just to track his own investments and finances, but later on to keep in touch with family back in the old country. So he’s got a bit more experience under his belt.
Still, he manages to suss out all scams that target him, and does a fair bit of his own troubleshooting. And while the latter is decreasing in effectiveness as of late… the fact that he can still do this with a 5th grade education while in the grips of dementia at 86 makes me proud AF. I have to swing by more and more these days, but he always has detailed notes of what he’s looked up and what he’s tried and didn’t work, so I can have a full roadmap of what has happened. Honestly, I have clients half his age that are far more useless, and that’s why I still jump when he calls for help.
That’s cool! My grandmother was similar–discovered email in her early 80s and loved it, got herself a printer to print out letters to send to people. Last I saw her before she died, she asked me to help set up her phone so she could answer emails on it.
She loved getting emails from people too. It made me remember how exciting that stuff was when I first started using it and it still felt like a great, new thing to make it easier to connect with folks and explore the world.
Mother in law calls me during work, blaring warnings sounds blaring in the background, warning her that she has a virus and NOT to try to reboot or unplug the computer….
MIL: what do I do/why is this happening?
Me: you clicked on something… unplug the computer
MIL: but it says not to
Me: it’s ok, it is trying to get you to call the number so that you will give them money
MIL: I am too afraid
Me: ok, if you want to give them money or your credentials so that they can take all of your money, feel free. Just don’t drive to Walgreens to buy gift cards again… you will miss your soap operas
MIL: Ok, I’ll unplug it
Cave woman that I helped: “You’re not installing porn are you?”
Me: “Uhh, no?! Is that what you meant by helping you to setup the computer. Are you mistaking me for your husband?”
Friend of the family but still…
Had to travel by boat to an island with no road connection to turn on a printer, after having been promised that it was, in fact, on.
Once turned on it was working. Well as much as a printer can work.
Well as much as a printer can work.
Only after a ceremonial blood sacrifice on the Tuesday after a blood moon. Got it.
Waste of two goats. Better to have them mow your lawn.
Step 6. Grab a bat and perform percussive maintenance
Unfortunately there were no other parties present to provide a second opinion, only their cat. Which, to be fair, is probably less tech illiterate than the human.
I bought my mother a laptop and she treated the touch pad like something that was to fragile to actually use. So she hardly used the computer because no matter how many times I showed her you could actually press it and move your finger across it and it wouldn’t break and she kept asking me how to move around the desktop using the keys cause “I don’t want to damage it”. I finally got fed up one day and found myself tapping the touch pad really hard repeatedly while saying “See it won’t break!!!” She ended up giving the laptop away cause she was too afraid to break it.
buy her a mouse?
She didn’t like the mouse for some reason, I could never get a straight answer as to why.
Dad: “I don’t have my wallpaper anymore on my desktop !”
Me: “Ok, what’s in C:\User.…\Pictures” ?
Dad: "I don’t have C:, I juste have D:"
Me: “WTF ? You don’t have a C:\Windows folder ?”
Dad: “No, I just have a D:\ drive. Windows is installed on D”
How th fuck did he managed to not have a C drive ???
How th fuck did he managed to not have a C drive ???
It happens. You should have just told him to go to the D: drive if its the only one
Every time my grandma needs help with her phone I always have to go and delete like 10 apps because she just keeps installing random useless ad ridden crap. She has like 6 diferent weather apps. She keeps installing random fucking gps navigation map apps. You open them and boom immediately ads. They just don’t learn.
Why does she download so many duplicate functionality apps? Has she told you why?
Because they have different data providers. Not like you can just use one app with several different data sources.
Is this sarcasm or not? I can’t tell.
That is what she said.
My parents are generally pretty good with tech. But where I end up pulling my hair out is when I look at my mom’s notifications. She lets any app notify her, and she has lots of apps. The other day when I looked she had two different weather apps reporting the temperature as a non-dismissable notification, and neither one of them was right.
I honestly don’t know how we’re related.
The other thing is when my mom says “but you told me to use this!” I got her to switch to Chrome from Internet Explorer, a dozen years ago. Now when I want to switch her over to Firefox (not even Waterfox!) she says, “but you told me this was the one to use!” Yeah, it was, during the Obama Administration. Same story with LastPass and Bitwarden. Sometimes the best tool changes, mom.
Ugh.
Yeah, I’ve dealt with the whole “why does my phone make noise all the time”
“Cause you have tons of bullshit apps that arent doing anything but dinging your notifications. Let me remove them”
“No, what if I miss something?!”
“You don’t even read the fucking things!”
“but I could still miss something!”
Same story with LastPass and Bitwarden. Sometimes the best tool changes, mom.
I’m still having this conversation with my wife occasionally…
The forgetting everything I took the time to explain even after “dumbing it down” to the simplest terms. Can’t blame them too much as it’s age related, but frustrating nonetheless.
Refusal to use a password manager. They write down the passwords plaintext in a physical pad. Not awful, all things considered, but then write down the password alphabetically without maintaining consistency in naming. Say it’s a password for a streaming service on a Sony TV. It might be under Sony, TV, or the name of the service; and all three titles might be entered in the pad because they couldn’t remember what they’d written it down under the first time. Then had to reset it and wrote it down under something else. So now you have passwords for TV, Sony, and Service, guess which one is right? Heaven help you if there’s more than one Sony TV in the house or something. At least the password managers go by website and a user created name so you have two chances of finding it.
When offering help over the phone they click or tap the wrong thing that leads to an incorrect page or menu, swearing they did it right, and being unable to locate the thing I’m telling them to look for after I led them step-by-step to the correct solution. This one’s pretty infuriating when many menus look the same and my questions about what they’re looking at only gets generic enough responses that I think they’re in the right place. It’s often only corrected when I ask them to take a pic with their phone and send it to me so I can figure out how they f’d up. I ended up installing remote desktop apps on their computers eventually so I could just do the work myself, quickly, with far less fuss.
My father is an engineer, which has its ups and downs. He can definitely be trusted to read a dialog box and nearly 100% of the time even understand what it says. Abstract concepts, problems he’s never encountered before, all generally no issue.
My stepmother, however, once asked me if she needs to rewind a DVD before putting it away. We’ve been working on it with her over the years. She’s certainly better now, but she still has an acute case of just randomly clicking on things without reading them.
My stepmother, however, once asked me if she needs to rewind a DVD before putting it away.
record scratch
…come again?
It makes total sense if you’re of the generation(s) whose brains were fucked up by the American public education system pre-1980 or so, and were never taught how to understand abstract concepts nor any critical thinking skills. They learned everything by rote recitation.
Everything.
FYI, this is probably in no small part why your parents struggle with technology or at the very least anything with an on-screen user interface so much.
Up until then, “thing you stick in machine that plays movies” inevitably involved some manner of tape. I imagine the majority of the public has absolutely no idea nor any interest in how this actually works inside the machine; as far as they’re concerned it’s either magic or complicated nerd technology stuff that they have convinced themselves that they’ll never understand. It was just hammered into them that When Done With Movie You Must Rewind (or else mom/dad/the video store will get mad at you). However, no logical connection is made between the medium in question and the act of rewinding. Merely that it is a movie thing. Movie things get rewound.
I’m sure this is also why a particular generation insists on calling Nintendo cartridges “tapes.”
